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Biographies of Members of the Expert Advisory Group to the Panel on the Nonprofit Sector

The Expert Advisory Panel is an eight-member group that will advise the Panel on the Nonprofit Sector that INDEPENDENT SECTOR created in October 2004. Joel L. Fleishman, professor of law and public policy studies, Duke University, and Marion R. Fremont-Smith, senior research fellow, Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, will serve as co-conveners of the group.

Co-conveners

Joel L. Fleishman is professor of law and public policy studies at Duke University, where he directs the Samuel and Ronnie Heyman Center for Ethics, Public Policy, and the Professions. He has held a number of administrative positions at Duke, including first senior vice president and director of the Foundation Strategy and Impact Research Program. In 1993, Mr. Fleishman relinquished his administrative duties to become president of The Atlantic Philanthropic Service Company, Inc., which advises clients on their charitable giving. He held that position until January 2001, when he was appointed senior advisor at APS, and he returned to full-time status at Duke in 2003. Mr. Fleishman’s scholarship reflects his long-standing interest in ethics, public policy, and nonprofit organizations, with his most recent articles focusing on public trust in nonprofits. He currently serves as chairman of the boards of the Urban Institute and of the Markle Foundation, and as trustee of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, the Artscroll Mesorah Heritage Foundation, the American Hebrew Academy, and the Partnership for Public Service. He is also chairman of the visiting committee of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. Mr. Fleishman is a member of the boards of the Boston Scientific Corporation, the Polo Ralph Lauren Corporation, and the James River Insurance Group. He received his B.A., M.A., and J.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and a master’s degree in law from Yale University.

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Marion R. Fremont-Smith is senior research fellow at the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, where she is directing a study of accountability and the regulation of nonprofits. Her recent book, Governing Nonprofit Organizations: Federal and State Law and Regulation, was published this spring, and she is now writing about government regulation of charitable fundraising. Mrs. Fremont-Smith’s interest in nonprofits began when she was assistant attorney general and director of the Division of Public Charities in Massachusetts, and she was then research director for Russell Sage Foundation, where she conducted two major studies on philanthropy. In 1964, she joined the Boston law firm of Choate, Hall and Stewart, specializing in nonprofit practice. She was elected partner in 1971, a position she held until 1997, when she became senior counsel and joined the Hauser Center. She has served on the boards of INDEPENDENT SECTOR, the Council on Foundations, and the Foundation Center. She was chairman of the Exempt Organization Committee of the American Bar Association's Tax Section, as well as a member of the Internal Revenue Service Advisory Group on Exempt Organizations and of the Practitioner Liaison Committee of the Massachusetts Department of Revenue. A member of the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Advisory Committee on Public Charities, she is a director of numerous charitable organizations. Mrs. Fremont-Smith received a B.A. from Wellesley College and a J.D. from Boston University.

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Advisory Group Members

Victoria Bjorklund is a partner at the law firm of Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP in New York, where she heads its Exempt Organizations Group. She advises public charities and private foundations on structure, governance, reorganizations, investments, and domestic and international grantmaking, and advises donors on charitable giving. Co-author of New York Nonprofit Law and Practice, she has served since 1989 as pro bono counsel to both the Robin Hood Foundation and Medecins Sans Frontieres/Doctors Without Borders, a recipient of the 1999 Nobel Peace Prize. Ms. Bjorklund is chair of the IRS’s Tax Exempt/Government Entities Advisory Committee, and previously chaired the American Bar Association’s Tax Section Committee on Exempt Organizations. Ms. Bjorklund was honored in 2002 as ABA Tax Section “Pro Bono Lawyer of the Year,” and she has been recognized several times for work in the aftermath of September 11, 2001. In 2003, she received the Commissioner’s Award, the highest honor the Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service can bestow, for her “timely, creative and nimble response to 9/11’s unprecedented legal challenges.” She earned her J.D. from Columbia University, a Ph.D. in medieval studies from Yale University, and a B.A. magna cum laude from Princeton University.

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Evelyn Brody is professor of law at Chicago-Kent College of Law, Illinois Institute of Technology, where she teaches nonprofit law and tax courses. Her expertise in nonprofit issues is clear through her writings, which have examined the tax treatment of education; the similarities between nonprofit and for-profit organizations; charitable endowments; the effects of tax reform on charities; nonprofit fiduciary law; the constitutional bounds of the right of association; parochialism in state charity law, and accountability and public trust. Professor Brody is also the reporter of the American Law Institute’s Project on Principles of the Law of Nonprofit Organizations and is secretary of the American Bar Association’s Section on Taxation. She is an associate scholar with the Urban Institute’s Center on Nonprofits and Philanthropy, and serves on the board of the Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action (ARNOVA). Prior to entering academics, she worked in the Office of Tax Policy at the U.S. Treasury Department, and practiced with firms in Washington, D.C., and Madison, Wisconsin. Professor Brody received her J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center and her B.A. from Yale College.

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William Josephson recently retired after five years as Assistant Attorney General-in-Charge of the New York State Law Department’s Charities Bureau, where he led investigations into the operations of nonprofits and supported regulatory changes to improve government oversight. He was previously a partner at the law firm of Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson, and he has held several positions in the public sector, including General Counsel to the Peace Corps, special assistant to the director of the Peace Corps, and Far East regional counsel to the International Cooperation Administration (subsequently the Agency for International Development). Mr. Josephson is president of the Peace Corps Institute and has been a member of the New York State Historical Advisory Board and a trustee of the New York State Archives Partnership Trust. He also served as trustee and chairman of the Budget and Finance Committee of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, a member of the advisory board of the National Service Study Project and a member of the Board of Overseers of Simon’s Rock of Bard College. Mr. Josephson graduated from the University of Chicago and Columbia University Law School.

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Lester M. Salamon is a professor at The Johns Hopkins University and director of the Center for Civil Society Studies at the Johns Hopkins Institute for Policy Studies. He previously served as director of the Center for Governance and Management Research at the Urban Institute in Washington, D.C., and as deputy associate director of the U.S. Office of Management and Budget. Dr. Salamon was a pioneer in the empirical study of the nonprofit sector in the United States and throughout the world. His 1982 book, The Federal Budget and the Nonprofit Sector, was the first to document the scale of the American nonprofit sector and the extent of government support to it. Dr. Salamon subsequently extended empirical assessment to international nonprofits, and he has published the results of this comparative research in several books. He is also the author of America’s Nonprofit Sector: A Primer, which is used widely in college-level courses. Dr. Salamon received his B.A. degree in economics and policy studies from Princeton University and his Ph.D. in government from Harvard University. He serves on the Social Science Research Council’s Committee on the Nonprofit Sector and Philanthropy, on the boards of the Maryland Association of Nonprofit Organizations and the Chesapeake Community Foundation, and on the editorial boards of scholarly journals.

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Eugene Steuerle is a senior fellow at the Urban Institute, a columnist for Tax Notes magazine, and a co-director of the Urban Institute-Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center. Among other positions, he has served as deputy assistant secretary for tax analysis of the U.S. Treasury Department, president of the National Tax Association, chair of the 1999 technical panel advising Social Security on its methods and assumptions, economic coordinator and original organizer of the 1984 Treasury study that led to the Tax Reform Act of 1986, and a columnist for the Financial Times. He is the author, co-author or co-editor of over 150 articles, reports, and testimonies, 650 briefs, and 11 books, including Nonprofits and Government: Collaboration and Conflict and Contemporary U.S. Tax Policy. His research on charity and philanthropy includes studies on the patterns of giving by the wealthy, the effect of taxes on charitable giving, payout rates for foundations, and ways of simplifying and reforming tax rules for charitable contributions and charitable giving. He serves on the National Committee on Vital and Health Statistics and on advisory panels or boards for the Congressional Budget Office, the General Accounting Office, the Joint Committee on Taxation, and the Actuarial Foundation.

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Eugene R. Tempel is executive director of the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University and professor of philanthropic studies, public administration, and higher education at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. An expert in the study and practice of philanthropy and nonprofit management, Dr. Tempel has more than two decades of experience in administration, teaching, fundraising, and international consulting. He previously served as vice chancellor of IUPUI and as vice president of the Indiana University Foundation. He has held numerous leadership positions with the Association of Fundraising Professionals, currently serving as chair of its Ethics Committee. Dr. Tempel served as the first elected president of the Nonprofit Academic Centers Council, a national organization of university centers dedicated to teaching, research, and service related to philanthropy and the nonprofit sector. He is a member of several nonprofit and for-profit boards of directors and is the past chair of the Indiana Commission on Community Service and Volunteerism. The NonProfit Times has regularly selected him as one of the 50 most influential leaders in the nonprofit sector.

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